[Osmf-talk] OSGeo Oceania Local Chapter application

[Andrew Harvey]

On Sat, 8 Aug 2020 at 20:45, Joost Schouppe [OSMF secretary] <
secretary at osmfoundation.org> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> You may be aware that OsGeo Oceania has applied to become an official
> Local Chapter of the OpenStreetMap Foundation. As part of the application
> process, we would like to ask you, the OSMF membership, how you feel about
> this. Do you support this application? Do you have any questions, comments
> or concerns?
>

I'm supportive of the application, but I think that goes without saying as
I'm one of the people behind the push for the application to become a LC.

I'm in agreement with Edoardo and Greg's comments here.

>From the OSGeo Oceania side I don't see anything preventing future single
country organisations emerging, but right now there are not enough
volunteers and resources to start a local chapter for each country, by
having a single organisation covering the whole region our precious
resources can be pooled for the benefit of everyone more efficiently.

> I also have my doubts on the significance OpenStreetMap plays in the
OSGeo Oceania activities in general and if the position of the OSM
community within the organization is strong enough for it to fulfill
the role of a local chapter.  But i have not looked at this deeply
enough to form a clear opinion.

As Edoardo mentioned we are forming some kind of OSM working group within
OSGeo Oceania which will have a more narrow focus, but even without that
OSGeo Oceania's Terms of Reference say "Its purpose is to foster the growth
of the geospatial open source & open data community in the Oceania region,
including the oversight and stewardship of a FOSS4G & SotM Conference
series", open data community covers OpenStreetMap.

For our last two conferences we had a healthy amount of participants,
sponsors and program content which mostly fell in the OSM "camp", certainly
not insignificant.
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